Big East play has been anything but smooth sailing for No. 17 Creighton men’s basketball, but each time the Jays have found themselves in a bit of trouble they’ve responded to keep their conference title hopes alive as we approach the midway-point.
Creighton dropped its first two league games, including one at home. The Bluejays followed that up with a four-game winning streak including two tough ones at CHI health Center Omaha leading up to their road trip to the two teams atop the conference standings.
Creighton’s stop in Storrs did not go well as the Bluejays lost to top-ranked UConn to fall to 4-3 in league play. A loss at Seton Hall on Saturday would have put the Jays three full games back of the Huskies and Pirates, but somehow, someway, after 55 minutes, Creighton found a way to get the victory.
“Every win in this league is important, especially when you can go on the road,” Coach Greg McDermott said on Monday. “Like I told the guys, we lost one to Villanova that we probably should have won and we maybe stole one against St. John’s when things didn’t look great. You have to now go do something that not many people are going to do, you have to steal one somewhere, and Seton Hall is certainly one of those opportunities where not a lot of teams are going to win there. UConn’s already lost there, Marquette’s already lost there, so it just puts you in a better spot.
“Obviously, it’s a win that’s going to have teeth in March when you can beat a team that’s as good as Seton Hall on the road.”
The win certainly didn’t come without its fair share of mistakes. Multiple Jays missed some important free throws that could have put the game away sooner. A bad turnover nearly swung the game in Seton Hall’s favor. Creighton had a lot of open looks from 3 not go down. Even so, the Jays found a way to overcome those mistakes and make one or two more plays down the stretch.
“I think we just did a great job of kind of moving on to the next play,” Baylor Scheierman said. “Because there were a lot of plays where we thought maybe we won the game and then we lost it. The emotions going up and down the whole game and kind of being able to stay even-keeled and just move on from one play to the next I think is a big thing for us to learn and grow from.”
Scheierman played 55 minutes in the game. Ryan Kalkbrenner played 54. Trey Alexander played 53. Even Steven Ashworth was at 48 minutes despite having to leave the court at one point to get a cut over his eye cleaned up. Alexander and Scheierman are now first and second in the Big East in minutes played at 35.9 and 35.6, respectively. In eight big East games, Scheierman is at 39.9 minutes per game after playing every second of the triple-overtime game in Newark. You won’t hear him complaining, though.
“It’s really just all kind of mental and the preparation, kind of just trust your training,” Scheierman said. “We spent a lot of time in the offseason preparing our bodies for the season and like Mac said, when we’re in season, Jeremy [Anderson] does a great job of load-managing us throughout the week and even throughout practice to make sure that if that needs to be the case where we have to play a lot of minutes like that, we’re ready for it. When push comes to shove, it’s all mental and we’re all competitors and we want to be out there, and so we’ll push through whatever we need to do to get the W.”
Nobody did more to get the win than Kalkbrenner, who put up 28 points on a career-high 23 field goal attempts to go with nine rebounds and five blocks. Creighton did a much better job of executing its offense and keeping the big man involved while committing just six turnovers.
“We really took good care of basketball,” McDermott said. “Steven had eight assists, no turnovers. Trey and Baylor were solid with the ball as well. Then Kalk was active. We were able to get him on the move some and then get him on the block some. He wasn’t as efficient as he usually is around the rim, but a couple times he maybe got fouled. For him to do what he did at his size and play 50 minutes is really incredible.”
With a road split in hand, Creighton is back in Omaha for a three-game home stand starting with Xavier (No. 34 in KenPom) on Tuesday night. The Musketeers are 10-8 overall including 4-3 in Big East play, half a game back of the Jays with wins over Seton Hall and Providence.
Coach Sean Miller lost two frontcourt starters to injury before the season even started in Zach Freemantle and Jerome Hunter, but for the second straight year Coach Sean Miller hit it big in the transfer portal with former Rice standout Quincy Olivari, a 6-foot-3 guard whose already impressive numbers have improved despite the step up in competition. He’s leading the Musketeers at 18.1 points per game and is shooting 43.4% on 6.4 3-point attempts per game.
Former Western Kentucky point guard Dayvion McKnight has been another big addition (10.6 points and 5.1 assists per game) while Desmond Claude, a 6-foot-6 wing, has made a big sophomore leap at 16.0 points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.0 assist per game. That trio of guards is the driving force behind Xavier’s up-tempo attack.
“They’re so fast, the fastest team we’ve played this year in transition,” McDermott said. “And really, all three of them can come at you with pace, especially when they take it off the glass. So our ability to get back and get turned around — I think they’re third in the country in their efficiency in the first six seconds of the shot clock. So we’re going to have to get back get turned around and get our defense put together.
“Also, it’s easier to get your defense put together if, number one, you don’t turn over, and number two, you’re taking good shots. Oftentimes when somebody takes a bad shot, it’s a shot their teammates didn’t expect them to take, so your transition defense isn’t already on the move when someone takes a bad shot. So as crazy as it sounds, shot selection is really important to transition defense and it probably doesn’t get talked about enough.”
In addition to testing Creighton in transition, the Musketeers will also assert a lot of pressure on the offensive glass, just like the Jays’ previous three opponents. In conference play, Xavier is second in offensive rebound rate at 38.7%, narrowly behind the Pirates and ahead of the Huskies. Abou Ousmane, a 6-foot-10, 244-pound senior transfer from North Texas, leads the charge in that area with 2.9 offensive rebounds per game. He’s averaging a team-best 6.9 total rebounds while adding 8.6 points and 1.4 blocks per game.
Tipoff on Tuesday is set for 7:30 p.m. on FS1 with Kevin Kugler and Nick Bahe on the call.
